Year 1 Writing Checklist
These Twinkl writing checklists link to the expectations set out in the 2014 English National Curriculum
for Writing and also include reference to the guidance set out in English Appendixes 1 & 2. They are
split into:
• Working Towards the Expected Standard
• Working at the Expected Standard
• Working at Greater Depth Within the Expected Standard
All of the statements are progressive within and across the year groups, and work on the expectation
that the majority of pupils will be working on their own year group’s aims. Consequently, Twinkl
have tried to ensure that the criteria for Working Towards the Expected Standard in one year group
is not the same as the criteria for Working at Greater Depth in the previous year group. The criteria
for Working Towards and Working at Greater Depth in any year group is related to that year group’s
National Curriculum expectations.
It is important to reiterate that there are no DfE-published exemplification assessment documents
available for Years 1, 3, 4 and 5, and therefore the Twinkl writing checklists should only be used as
a guide for referencing the attainment of pupils within these year groups.
Teachers may feel the need to revisit expectations from earlier years to consolidate knowledge and
build on pupils’ understanding, or go beyond the aims set out here if they feel it is appropriate for their
highest-attaining students.
How to Use the Checklists
The grids can be used to track the attainment of individual pupils or alternatively, could be used
to highlight the progress of groups of students who are focusing on the same development areas or
writing targets.
They allow teachers to make ‘best fit’ judgements by ticking and dating relevant criteria as a child/
group progresses throughout a term or school year.
The statements with the checklists are set out in colour-coded boxes: pink for composition; green for
grammar and punctuation and blue for transcription.
Year 1 Writing Checklist
Working Towards the Expected Standard:
Pupil(s) are beginning to meet the following aims with support:
To use their own simple story ideas or retell a familiar story using short,
simplistic sentences.
To reread their writing aloud to check that it makes sense.
To use adjectives that have been modelled.
To use simple sentence structures (which may often
be repetitive).
capital letters for names, places, the days of the week and the
personal pronoun ‘I’.
Has an
awareness of:
finger spaces.
full stops to end sentences.
To spell some words containing previously taught phonemes and GPCs (Grapheme,
Phoneme Correspondence) accurately.
To spell some Y1 common exception words accurately (from English Appendix 1).
To write lower case letters in the correct direction, starting and finishing in the
right place.
Year 1 Writing Checklist
Working at the Expected Standard:
Year 1 Writing Checklist
Working at Greater Depth within the Expected standard:
Pupil(s) are confidently and independently able to apply their knowledge, after
discussion with their teacher:
Pupil(s) are confidently and independently able to apply their knowledge, after
discussion with their teacher:
To write sentences in order to create short narratives and non-fiction texts.
To write sentences in order to create short narratives and non-fiction texts that are
consistent in their features and purpose.
To use some features of different text types (although these may not be consistent).
To use a number of features of different text types and make appropriate topic /
subject matter vocabulary choices.
To reread their writing to check that it makes sense and make suggested changes.
To use adjectives to describe.
To use simple sentence structures.
To use the joining word (conjunction) ‘and’ to link ideas and sentences.
capital letters for names, places, the days of the week and the
personal pronoun ‘I’.
Has an
awareness of:
To reread their writing to check that it makes sense and independently make changes.
To use adjectives to describe (sometimes ambitious beyond the year group).
To use simple and compound sentence structures.
To use the joining word (conjunction) ‘and’ to link ideas and sentences.
capital letters for names, places, the days of the week and the
personal pronoun ‘I’.
finger spaces.
full stops to end sentences.
question marks.
exclamation marks.
To spell most words containing previously taught phonemes and GPCs (Grapheme,
Phoneme Correspondence) accurately.
To spell most Y1 common exception words and days of the week accurately (from
English Appendix 1).
To use -s and -es to form regular plurals correctly.
To use the prefix ‘un’.
To add the suffixes –ing, -ed, -er and –est to root words (with no change to the root
word).
Are able to
regularly use
finger spaces.
full stops to end sentences.
question marks.
exclamation marks.
To spell all words containing previously taught phonemes and GPCs (Grapheme,
Phoneme Correspondence) accurately.
To spell all Y1 common exception words and days of the week accurately (from
English Appendix 1).
To use -s and -es to form regular plurals correctly.
To use the prefix ‘un’.
To add the suffixes –ing, -ed, -er and –est to root words.
To write lower case and capital letters in the correct direction, starting and finishing
in the right place.
To spell simple compound words.
To write lower case and capital letters in the correct direction, starting and finishing
in the right place with a good level of consistency.
To write lower case and capital letters in the correct direction, starting and finishing
in the right place with a good level of consistency.